“Achieving WCAG 2.0 with PDF/UA” now available

As previously discussed, since completing work on PDF/UA-1, AIIM’s Committee for PDF/UA have been busy developing documents to support PDF/UA, and especially, to help developers use PDF/UA in the context of other accessibility standards.

What is the Purpose of the Mapping?

If you can map PDF/UA to WCAG 2.0, why do you need PDF/UA? Why aren’t the PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 sufficient?

This document articulates the alignment between WCAG 2.0 and ISO 14289-1:2012 (PDF/UA), the international standard for accessible PDF technology. PDF software developers can achieve conformance with applicable WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria via implementations that follow this mapping to PDF/UA. As such, this mapping shows how to validate, in PDF file-format terms, a PDF/UA document against WCAG 2.0.

Conformance with PDF/UA does not guarantee conformance with WCAG 2.0. For some Success Criteria, especially those pertaining to media, actions, scripting, design or content considerations, authors and developers must refer directly to WCAG 2.0.

Why Use this Document?

Vendors who deliver PDF files in many cases are being asked to deliver PDF files in conformance with WCAG 2.0. For many vendors this is unknown territory, and WCAG 2.0 does not provide sufficient PDF-specific technical information to achieve similar results between situations or implementations.

Since this mapping shows what’s necessary to create, process and validate, in PDF file-format and conforming reader terms, a PDF/UA conforming document and reader to meet all applicable WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria, it’s useful whether you are reading PDF/UA and the ISO 32000-1 from a WCAG 2.0 perspective, or the other way around.

Where can I get it?

About PDF/UA Competence Center

The PDF/UA Competence Center focuses on developing a specification for accessible PDF, in particular ensuring conforming PDF files are accessible and usable to all, including those who use assistive technology.